Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

This slightly silly (but highly enjoyable!) piece by Ryan Veeder is perhaps inspired by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, as its story is built around the escapades of two minor characters from his previous work, Taco Fiction.

I came across this work first, then later played Taco Fiction to compare. The two are not related in any meaningful way, so perhaps it's not really appropriate to think of Dial C for Cupcakes as a sequel. Certainly, this piece works well on a standalone basis.

The first act of the story seems almost conscientiously designed around exercising some of the latest features of Inform 7, specifically the ability to do floating point math and to switch the perspective and tense of rendered text. Once the exposition is done, however, it settles into a more typical style of interaction, in a scenario that poses the question: Just how far are you willing to go for friendship, justice, and/or frosting?

The second act is well-paced and entertaining, and it does a good job of demonstrating how careful design of NPC interaction can provide an appropriate level of satisfaction to the player without demanding too much from the author.

With a semi-realistic setting and a story that gives license to be somewhat mischievous, this is one of those pieces that probably has broad enough appeal to hold the interest of casual mainstream players -- or even those new to interactive fiction. I'll be adding it to my short list of recommended pieces for those just trying IF, and I would definitely point it out as a great seasonal piece around Halloween. While it might not quite be kid-safe (since an understanding of certain adult motivations is necessary to complete the story), it's certainly no worse than PG.

Simon Deimel's Enigma starts out like an off-kilter version of "Hello, World" for Inform 7.

You start in a room frozen in time, and the whole game plays out as the protagonist's experience of a single moment oriented around one decision(Spoiler - click to show): to shoot or spare your best friend. Starting with only immediate sensations, you must build a chain of association between memories and perceptions that let you come to a realization about the truth of the situation you are in.

Exploring a memory may let you perceive things more clearly. Exploring a perception may trigger a memory. On occasion, a threshold can be reached that allows a kind of breakthrough into new conceptual spaces. Sometimes memories or perceptions will be enhanced, providing a more connected impression over which to mull, so you must return to a topic to see how new scraps of information fit into it. The text is delivered in a fast-paced, heart-hammering style that seeps into your attitude and keeps you rapidly typing until you arrive at the conclusion.

There are really only two verbs that make a difference(Spoiler - click to show): 1) "examine" and 2) "remember" or "think about". If you somehow get lost, the "hints" command will offer specific topics for introspection. This is probably not a good thing to use as a first resort, but it's helpful on a second run through.

It's really quite remarkable that Mr. Deimel has managed to create such a compelling experience out of such a small range of action, and the extent to which he has achieved this speaks to his creativity in developing and executing the concept. While he notes in the post-game INFO block that the basic concept is not new, it was new to me.

From a technical standpoint, the execution is good but could use a bit more refinement to reduce repetition of certain topics and smooth the experience. As a player, it's sometimes clear that you have hit a dead end, but it's also difficult to ascertain which topic will advance the situation without resorting to hints. Perhaps a routine that would "auto-associate" previously-explored topics that have been updated due to new information after a certain number of turns?

On the other hand, the sense of urgently and repetitively reviewing bits of experience very much conveys the mindset of the PC, and perhaps it enhances rather than detracts from the play experience overall.

From a writing standpoint, there are opportunities for improvement(Spoiler - click to show)-- for example, it's not made at all clear what drove Tim over the edge, and this leaves the whole scenario feeling a bit forced. Then again, it's not always clear in real life, either, so perhaps that's intentional.

In addition, although I liked the writing style, some additional work to smooth out the line breaks when reviewing the scene would have greatly improved the impression of a fully completed and polished work.

Overall, a good comp entry and an enjoyable short work. I look forward to more from Mr. Deimel in the future, and will be interested in exploring some of his past works.

This decade-old SpeedIF entry takes only a few minutes to complete, and is not a fully-developed work by any means. Still, it seemed worth it to put together a quick write-up, since it demonstrates a narrative device from which would-be authors can learn.

The interaction here is done in the style of a combat scene in a typical war movie, though the setting is a strange blending of fantasy and modern (or possibly sci-fi?) tropes. The action starts in media res, with you pinned down, low on ammo, and basically doomed.

What's interesting here is the way that you, the player, are not given a complete description of your environment; instead, significant new elements are injected serially over the course of several turns.

This is a clever trick, in that it takes advantage of the deeply-ingrained player's instinct to examine everything new to encourage him or her to "play along" with the developing narrative. (A similar "pointillist" style can be seen in Ashwell's Ugly Chapter, but in that case it is used more for the background than the foreground.)

While this piece is almost over before it has begun (it only lasts 10 turns or so), and there doesn't seem to be any possibility for meaningful interaction with the scene playing out, I was struck by how cinematic the sequence feels. Forcing the player to constantly reorient to the PC's situation this way seems similar to the technique of fast panning used in cinema to draw the audience "into" the action.

If you're a long-time player of IF, you might have skipped this work by Andrew Plotkin, which is typically billed as an "introductory" piece for those new to the genre. If you approach The Dreamhold with this mindset, that's almost certainly how you'll experience it, but that is not all that is offered.

Upon first completing this game many months ago, I found it to be a typical Plotkin work in the sense that it almost flippantly demonstrates the power of top-notch prose and programming to revitalize otherwise stale conventions in the genre, but I didn't see much else to recommend it. The most obvious innovation is the "tutorial voice" (well-covered elsewhere) which earns the work its status as one suitable for novices, but this held little magic to me: first, because I'm not a novice; second, because its success is questionable based on the various online reactions of actual newbies; and third, because this approach has been pushed even further since The Dreamhold was released, rendering it no longer state-of-the-art.

I gave an up-vote to Brian Campbell's IFDB review, decided I had nothing to add, and moved on... until the next day, when, still puzzling over the somewhat cryptic ending and the various loose ends, I started playing again with a walkthrough nearby for reference. Before long, I had experienced many of the hidden nooks of interaction and seen the alternate ending, which was equally cryptic and not particularly more satisfying.

Over the ensuing weeks, however, I slowly came to realize that this alternate ending is not your typical example of branching narrative structure, and that realization is what eventually drove me here to write this.

Most interactive experiences with multiple endings very explicitly present the choices relevant to shaping the outcome as choices; that is they are framed as mutually-exclusive, either-or options that can reasonably be expected to alter the outcome in a significant way. For many games, some or all of these choices are illusory, as multiple branches of interactivity will converge on the same situation again later, but generally at least a few will genuinely change the outcome.

In addition, most games that have multiple "winning" endings are quite careful to remain neutral or ambiguous in the guidance they offer about which branch to take. The signposts are up indicating the forks of the road, but there is no author influence about which direction to take. One reason for this may be that, given the amount of work required to implement the different branches within the game, the creators don't wish to do anything to discourage players from exploring them all in separate playthroughs.

In The Dreamhold, Plotkin does not follow these conventions. Challenging them seems to be one of the key experiments of this work.

With respect to determining which ending the player will see, the important branches in the action are not explicitly framed as choices for the player. Only one branch of action is even implied by the prose, and that path is framed not as one of two binary choices but as the single solution to a particular challenge. These are well-designed puzzles in the sense that they are well-hinted without the solution being immediately obvious, but, for clarity, I will term these the "obvious" paths.

Here is the part that I find fascinating: (Spoiler - click to show)The obvious path (i.e. hinted puzzle solutions) is often dependent on a particular linear mechanic, meaning the solution is driven by moving a world state in a specific direction(Spoiler - click to show). Examples that spring to mind are the puzzle about finding your way in darkness and interacting with the hot springs. In each case, however, there is a corresponding solution using the same linear mechanic, but requiring that the player push the world state in the opposite direction from that needed in the obvious path. I'll call doing so taking a "non-obvious" path.

"Non-obvious" is perhaps not strong enough of a description -- "obscured" might be better. The prose does not hint at this option in any way I detected. The only hint is found in the very nature of the underlying linear mechanic; there is no reason, in the abstract, that the mechanic should not be reversible.

On the somewhat less abstract plane of writing code, the very fact that the author has to program interactions in both directions means that any theoretically invertible game mechanic will normally only have one "interesting" (i.e. story-relevant) direction. Not so in The Dreamhold, where Mr. Plotkin has taken the trouble to create what almost amounts to a secret game accessible only to those who discover the uniquely reversible nature of the puzzle structure.

I want to be clear: I don't think I would have known anything about this "other" side of the game if it weren't for the walkthrough. I feel confident that most of the people who play through this (especially novices!) would not hit on even one of these non-obvious solutions. (Spoiler - click to show)To hit on enough of them to see the pattern, to grasp the... meta-puzzle? meta-mechanic? and work all of the alternate solutions through to the end is asking a lot. In a piece with a significant number of intentional red herrings and dead ends, offering only the slightest and most indirect indications of the existence of the alternate solutions or the fact that associated prizes have any significance (via the mural) can be fairly called unfair. But then again, asking a lot from players is par for the course in much of Mr. Plotkin's work.

So, given the lack of a direct explanation, what's it all about? (Spoiler - click to show)Having mulled over both endings at length, the overarching theme seems to be about the choice of how to use power. The PC has reached the extreme of power within his current plane of existence, and the player's actions drive him towards one of two paths. In the first, via the "obvious" path, the PC continues his attempt to dominate the entire plane. This is perhaps a more dubious endeavor than the PC believes, given that it was an error during a previous attempt that left him in the state in which you find him at the start of the game. In the second, via the "obscured" path, the PC turns that power inward and transcends to a new plane of existence -- beginning anew to start the climb all over again from the bottom. This is the path of legend as laid out in the game world, the path that is perhaps more promising for the PC and more satisfying for the player, since it lacks the malevolent and maniacal overtones of the first path. Of course, the preceding is my own interpretation; your mileage may vary.

As a final note, I think it's worth pointing out that, despite the prose's uncanny ability to make you feel "there" (as Magnus Olsson's review puts it) in terms of the game world, it seems to intentionally avoid trying to do the same thing in terms of the PC's mind. True, the PC quite deliberately begins as a blank slate, but surely some of the previous personality should be emerging as the player progresses through either of the two core collection quests? Given the arguably distasteful nature of the obvious ending, adding an ever-more-megalomaniac tinge to the PC's thoughts would provide some players the motivation to avoid it. This, coupled with a some real hinting at the existence of the second path would elevate the overall narrative structure to a true and conscious choice for the player, which I, personally, would have found tremendously more satisfying. As it is, the effect of hiding the second path so thoroughly is to render it invisible in the course of typical play, leaving the average player with seems like half of the intended experience.

Somehow, I doubt this is unplanned. It seems clear that Mr. Plotkin wants you to work for the extras offered, that this other path (and the resulting opportunity for greater insight into the story) is primarily there for elite players. Whether intended or not, hiding one path results in players being directed towards the other; The Dreamhold does not seem neutral here, even though it can be argued that such neutrality is implicit in a game about unguided exploration of an unknown environment. The counter-argument is that players cannot assume that a work of IF is open-ended -- they are at the mercy of authors to provide nudges about which of the endless possibilities of imagination are realized within the work at hand.

Perhaps Mr. Plotkin thought this all out, and perhaps this is The Dreamhold's central challenge to the player: to make the choice to look for a choice, instead of following the obvious path. If so, the unconventional design is very cleverly and subtly executed, but it's not clear to me why this poker-faced approach is superior to offering additional encouragement (delivered in his deftly minimalist style) to players to discover the alternate path.

In conclusion, this is a game well worth your time, but I do not recommend it for novices. Long-time players who have not yet experienced it should approach The Dreamhold with explicit instructions to dig deep and try to think outside the box of how IF typically works; without such preparation you are likely to miss the aspects of this work that separate it from the pack.

The first and only work ever published by author Brian Uri, Augmented Forth is an astounding debut piece. Coded via Inform 6, its half-a-megabyte source code is a testament to levels of dedication and attention to detail that are extremely rare.

I often comment that a game could use more polish -- not here. Augmented Forth may as well be lacquered! Its interaction is extraordinarily smooth and fairly gleams with charm and wit from every angle. I found myself marveling again and again that the author had covered the situation with some special bit of flair, whether it was one of the many small jokes sprinkled throughout or just a simple variation on standard wording to show that you were still "within bounds" of the planned interaction.

I can't stress enough how impressed I am by this aspect of the game, and this alone makes it worth playing to experience. If you've ever tried your hand at writing IF, you know how much work all of these little details add up to, and my hat is off to Mr. Uri here. The only places I found any hiccups in the flow were in cases where there is a vocabulary overlap between objects that causes undesirable disambiguation requests, a notoriously tricky issue to handle using Inform 6's parse_name routine.

However, having spent some time admiring this beautiful instrument, I was a little disappointed with actually playing it. As Emily Short pointed out, there are "irritating patches, mostly related to the design of the puzzles", places where the expected final nudges (or even telling silences in the form of careful omissions) are not forthcoming, even though I had a partial solution.

Thinking about this, I came to believe that, in such instances, the tremendous level of polish actually works against the gameplay. In a typical work of IF, the "shininess" of world interaction is itself a form of hinting: Often, one knows one's on the right track by virtue of the differences from more general default responses. The richly embroidered surface detail of Augmented Forth magnificently camouflages any such hinting, leaving the player sometimes at a loss to differentiate between threads of plot and threads of whimsy.

Most puzzles are relatively straightforward, sometimes of the physics (or silly physics) variety and sometimes along "hey, let's see if this new spell can do that" lines. There were only a few that didn't work for me(Spoiler - click to show):

#1 the fern -- (Spoiler - click to show)The hinting in the description about it is misleading. This isn't one of those "help the plant thrive" puzzles. (Spoiler - click to show)The responses to basic actions are misleading. They give the impression that you shouldn't be dealing with the fern now (but maybe should later) when it definitely is relevant in the immediate context. (Spoiler - click to show)First, you have to understand the basic goal here, which means you should have already visited the other cottage and gotten to understand its inhabitant a bit. (Spoiler - click to show)The framed music gives a strong hint of the goal here. (Spoiler - click to show)If you want these two to fall in love, the first thing you have to do is get them in the same room. (Spoiler - click to show)She's a bit too wrapped up in her book to move, but he is just waiting at her beck and call. (Spoiler - click to show)What will make her call him? (Spoiler - click to show)Well, he's a butler, what do butlers do? (Spoiler - click to show)Yes, they introduce visitors... except here. Yes, they bring food and drinks.... except here. (Spoiler - click to show)Maybe you've noticed he's really tidy? Might he tidy something up for her? (Spoiler - click to show)Now even if you have the right idea, you're up against a guess-the-verb challenge. Try the most basic verbs. (Spoiler - click to show)Not "spill soil" or "knock over pot" or "throw dirt" or "break pot" (another misleading response)... just "push plant" is the magic command. This particular interaction is so antithetical to the rest of the work's tone that I really don't understand how it was left as is during playtesting.

#2 the safe -- (Spoiler - click to show)The basics here are easy enough to understand, you need to get on the platform to access the safe, and additional weight on the platform sets off a trap. (Spoiler - click to show)No problem, there's a spell for that right? (Spoiler - click to show)Only it doesn't work. Even though there's a presumably heavy safe on the platform, and increasing gravity should add quite a bit of weight. (Spoiler - click to show)Put something heavy on the platform instead, like one of the big books lying around. Again, this one just kind of leaves me shaking my head, as it would be trivial to implement the alternate (and, in this game, perhaps more natural) solution.

#3 Moilan -- (Spoiler - click to show)This one can't be solved until you have made some progress gathering music, so stop here unless you've been to all the initially-accessible places. (Spoiler - click to show)He's a gate guard, and you want through the gate, a common type of puzzle. (Spoiler - click to show)So you have to bribe or divert or disable him, of course. (Spoiler - click to show)You should pick up some clues that he has a favorite kind of food from one of many places. (Spoiler - click to show)Where can you find some of that stuff? (Spoiler - click to show)... that he doesn't eat the moment you try to get it? (Spoiler - click to show)No dice on finding any, huh? Maybe you can trick him? (Spoiler - click to show)Anything that looks like fudge around? (Spoiler - click to show)Perhaps something brown with a thick texture? (Spoiler - click to show)Bring him some mud in the cup. (Spoiler - click to show)You might have to make some mud first, using magic. (Spoiler - click to show)It's a bit indirect, but stand in the Center of Volcano and use "Rainy Day" to cause a storm, then gather mud in the quarry ("fill cup with mud"). Here, the design issue is the very weak link between fudge and mud. ANY kind of relevant hint would have worked here, such as an infinite supply of fudge that he never stops eating (to clue you that getting him to ingest something fudge-like might be possible) or changing his food mania to coffee (especially strong black coffee, sometimes referred to as "mud", and which, unlike fudge, is served in a cup).

Also, I encountered only one bug in the game, but it is something of a doozy(Spoiler - click to show): As Levi Boyles mentions in another review here, in Release 2 it is possible to defeat the obstacle of one puzzle (involving learning a difficult piece of music) by removing it from your inventory via a method other than dropping it. In my case, I put it back on the stand and got the same effect -- being able to play the music without learning it.

Inspecting the source code, this appears to be due to the way it is handled programmatically: An array of booleans is used to track whether you can play a particular song, and the relevant boolean is not set to false for all verbs which allow its written form to leave your inventory. Thus this logic thinks you are still holding the sheet music even when you are not.

Since this is only piece that requires any effort to learn (and the puzzle structure prevents you from having both its sheet music and your trumpet at the same time, so it's the only time when the ability to play a non-memorized tune is meaningful), it probably would have been better to just test the world state directly (is the sheet music in inventory when the trumpet is played?) instead of trying to track this state of affairs with the same variables used to track memorization. Oh, well.

These (subjective) flaws left me with a much lower opinion of Augmented Forth as a game, but your mileage may vary.

Finally, I want to point some special attention to the handling of time in this game, which I thought was very well done. (Spoiler - click to show)Rather than being dependent on turn count or the default clock, time in Augmented Forth is plot-driven, with completion of certain puzzles advancing you to the next nebulous period of the day (e.g. "early morning", "midmorning"). Each advancement is coupled with a brief cutscene, filling you in on activity elsewhere in the game world in a plot arc with which your actions will intersect during the end game.

I don't know if this is the first work of IF to use this particular combination, but the well-written cutscenes together with the loose timekeeping produce a powerful synergy. With the cutscenes decoupled from turn count, the player is in no danger of being left behind by the outside events' timetable. With the resolution of time being so fuzzy, it doesn't seem as obvious that external events are waiting for your key actions (an illusion that the cutscene writing, with its indefinite pauses between scenes, is careful not to dispel). The net effect just seems to work for the purpose of telling the story in the IF medium in a way that is subtle, but wonderful.

Other reviewers have commented on the copious spoofy humor, and I agree that it only serves to add flavor for those who get the reference without excluding those who don't. Sometimes, the touch is so light that you might not even realize there was a joke unless you know what it refers to(Spoiler - click to show), such as the casual mention that you're feeling hungry at the start of a game (very topical in a time when the presence of a hunger puzzle was considered exceptionally stale and bitterly despised). Others are so blatant as to be inescapable today(Spoiler - click to show), like the presence of "Mollug" and a very amusingly-described ring.

All in all, this work is significantly above average in quality and sure to be fun to play for most people. Though the few problems I encountered were minor, they seem terribly out of place in a work that gets almost everything right (from an old school perspective). Consistency rates highly in my book, and these missteps knock off enough of a star to bring it just short of 4 star territory.

As a reminder, my ratings are unusually harsh, and 3 stars counts as a very good game. I would eagerly play another piece from Mr. Uri, should he publish one in the future, and old school fans should definitely try this one if they haven't yet.